During Democracy Now!'s seven-hour election special last night, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill asks Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich about the secret drone war that has expanded under President Obama's first term and the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen struck by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last year. [includes rush transcript]

At least 27 people have been killed in three consecutive days of U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan, part of a new wave of attacks over the past two weeks. The surge in drone strikes comes just a week after the New York Times revealed that President Obama personally oversees a "secret kill list" containing the names and photos of individuals targeted for assassination in the U.S. drone war. We go to London to speak with Chris Woods,...

President Obama’s counterterrorism chief John Brennan is heading up a new team to determine who should be targeted by armed U.S. drones overseas. The newly revealed procedure for drone attacks means Brennan’s staff consults the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies before ultimately deciding who will be targeted. One official said there is growing concern over "how easy it has become to kill someone" under the...

Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents families of civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes, was finally granted a visa to enter the U.S. this week after a long effort by the State Department to block his visit. He has just arrived in Washington, D.C., to attend the "Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control," organized by human rights groups to call attention to the lethal rise in the number of drone strikes under the...

The Obama administration is facing scrutiny for its role in the imprisonment of a Yemeni journalist who exposed how the United States was behind a 2009 bombing in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children. In January 2011, a Yemeni state security court gave the journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a five-year jail sentence on terrorism-related charges following a disputed trial that was condemned by several human rights and press freedom...

Has U.S. counterterrorism policy in Yemen strengthened the very threat it sought to eliminate? We speak with journalist Jeremy Scahill, who reports in a new cover story for The Nation magazine that U.S. drone strikes, civilian drone casualties and deepening poverty in Yemen have all contributed to the rise of an Islamist uprising. "The arrogance of the U.S. was always thinking that whatever U.S. official was sent to Yemen was smarter than...

Today we look back at 2011, a year that saw the U.S. killing of Osama Bin Laden, the ouster of a dictator in Egypt and the death of one in Libya, the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, and the expansion of the secret U.S. drone war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula. As U.S. troops leave Iraq, thousands of private security contractors remain to guard the U.S. embassy—the largest in the world. The Horn of...

The New York Times reported Monday the Obama administration has decided in principle to allow embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to enter the United States to receive "legitimate medical treatment." If the report is true, the United States will have agreed to Saleh’s arrival hours after his forces killed nine people demanding he be tried for deaths of protesters over the past year. Over the last several months,...

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was presented this weekend to three women: Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni peace activist and journalist, Tawakkul Karman, the first Arab woman to win the prize, as well as its youngest winner to date. We featured highlights from their acceptance addresses this week. Today we play a final excerpt from Karman, the mother of three who has led rallies in the protests...

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was presented this weekend to three women for "their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work." Democracy Now! aired highlights on Monday of the acceptance speeches of Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected female head of state on the African continent. Today we...